Godot Lens Flares 🎮, Shader Debugging 🛠️, Steam Reviews 💬
✨ Cutting-Edge Graphics & VFX
Procedural HDR Lens Flares for Godot: Softer, Faster, Customizable
Building on SIsilicon’s popular Godot 3.2 Lens Flare plugin, Critsium has crafted an enhanced version for Godot 4.x with extra downsampling and blur passes. Instead of traditional sprite-based flares, this system procedurally detects high-intensity pixels—especially with an HDR viewport—to generate dynamic flares. A range of node properties lets you tune intensity, softness, and color distortion. Critsium plans to release the effect after launching their free Touhou-inspired Godot game on Steam.
Black Hole VFX: Mirza Beig’s Gravitational Lens Shader for Unity
Technical Artist Mirza Beig has revealed a gravitational lens shader that simulates black hole–style distortion and can be easily ported to Unity. The effect bends and warps the scene to create mesmerizing animated setups, showcased across multiple environments. In replies on Reddit and X/Twitter, Beig shares technical details behind the implementation. This shader joins his growing collection of advanced VFX, including glass, hologram, spacetime lattice, VHS, crystal shaders, and surreal portal effects.
🧊 Smart Tricks in Game Mechanics
How One Dev Faked Thick, Breakable Ice Without Fancy Shaders
Trying to simulate thick, destructible ice, OrbitingDisco abandoned shader tricks and went full brute force. The system uses big ice tiles that get replaced by smaller, pre-cracked chunks on collision, which then become rigidbodies only when touched so they can react physically and sink away. It’s a wild, GameObject-heavy setup, but runs better than expected. The post also points readers to community suggestions, another ice-breaking prototype, and Matthieu Pujol’s polished icebreaker ship sim.
S2H: Shader-Only Printf Debugging and Visualization in Minutes
S2H is an open source, shader-only library that makes GPU debugging far more approachable. With a simple `#include` and a few lines of setup, you get printf-style logging plus 2D and 3D debug drawing directly from your shaders—no C++ code changes required. Designed to shine in hot-reload environments like Gigi, it’s ideal for rapid shader prototyping and inspection. Its minimal, cross-platform-friendly GLSL-style API is meant as a lightweight tool you add, debug with, then remove.
🧠Dev Workflows & Business Insights
How Thunderrock Innovations Ships Deep Strategy Games in One Year
Thunderrock Innovations, the two-person studio behind Keep Keepers and Islantiles, explains how they build deep, replayable strategy games on strict one-year dev cycles. They focus on a single core mechanic, prototype aggressively, and treat marketing and feedback as integral parts of development. Using metrics like median demo playtime and a “Fun & Appeal” lens, they refine both design and presentation. The interview also explores outsourcing, emotional resilience, and their concerns about PC indies drifting toward fast, mobile-style releases.
How Steam Reviews Can Triple Your Ad Conversions on Premium Games
Gamesight’s new data shows Steam review sentiment can be a major performance lever for paid games. When a premium title improved from “Mixed” to “Very Positive,” ad conversion rates nearly tripled, with a huge spike after a highly requested feature pushed it to “Overwhelmingly Positive.” Free-to-play games, by contrast, showed no measurable conversion impact from reviews. The message is clear: fix bugs, ship player-requested features, and sustained positive ratings can compound the returns on your marketing spend.